Discovering Portland's 100-year-old hidden tofu factory

+ browned butter peach cake with tofu cream recipe

Hidden off a busy street in Northeast Portland, Oregon, is America’s longest-running tofu factory, Ota Tofu. A Japanese couple, Saizo and Shina Ohta, co-founded the company in 1911. At that time, 1,250 Japanese immigrants lived in the Portland area mainly working in the lumber, railroad, and agricultural industries. In 1942, Saizo and Shina were incarcerated in an Idaho concentration camp after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066. Saizo died at the concentration camp in 1943, but his wife, Shina, returned at the end of the war in 1945 to resume business.

Today, Ota Tofu is located in a gray nondescript building, set back from the street on a tiny parking lot lined with industrial containers. When I stopped by on a Wednesday morning, there was a line of six customers. Some were loading their cars with bulk orders and others left by foot gingerly carrying clear baggies with jiggly blocks of tofu.

The menu is simple: tofu, age (tofu freshly fried in oil), and soymilk. A window behind the cash register provides a peek into the operations which haven’t changed much in over a century. Soybeans are ground into a pulp, the cream-colored liquid is strained, coagulated into curds, and then hand-shaped and cut into blocks.

I bought their soft tofu and decided to make tofu cream. It has a similar consistency and tang as crème fraîche, a French-style cultured sour cream, but a nuttier flavor from the tofu.

Tofu Cream (about 2 cups), modified from ‘Voila Vegan’ by Amanda Bankert—cookbook review

2 Tablespoons sugar

3 Tablespoons cornstarch

3/4 cup coconut milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

150g silken tofu

Juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon, according to taste

1. Mix the sugar and cornstarch in a bowl and set aside

2. Mix the vanilla and coconut milk in a saucepan and bring to a low simmer.

3. Pour half of the warmed coconut milk to the bowl with sugar and cornstarch, stirring to combine. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and bring to a low simmer, stirring constantly until thickened.

4. Transfer the mixture to a clean dish and chill in the fridge 2 to 3 hours.

5. When cool, blend in the silken tofu using a hand mixer or blender. Add the lemon juice to taste.

I served the tofu cream with an easy peach cake, using the last of the end-of-summer peaches.

Browned Butter Peach Cake, modified from ‘Love is a Pink Cake’ by Claire Ptak—cookbook review

3 peaches, pit removed and sliced into eights

3/4 cup (105g) flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 cup (100g) sugar

3/4 cup (180g) milk

1/2 cup (115 g) butter

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Heat the butter in the small saucepan over medium heat until the solids turn golden brown. Pour the browned butter into a non-reactive baking dish.

3. Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. Slowly mix in the milk until combined. Pour the batter into the baking dish with the melted butter. Do not stir.

4. Place the sliced peaches on top of the batter and bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake is set and the edges are a medium golden brown.

This is the perfect cake to highlight summer fruit; you could easily substitute other stone fruit or berries. The flavor of the browned butter really comes through and is a nice contrast to the tofu cream.

Looking at the line-up of tofu brands at the grocery store, I never would have guessed we had a local manufacturer with such a long-lived history. I had driven by Ota Tofu for years but discovered it on an impulse lunch stop. It’s a good reminder to get out and walk around a new part of town—you never know what hidden gems you might find.